User blog:Pinkguy the b0ss/Super Mario 64 Review
Recently, I've collected all 120 stars in Super Mario 64 for the first time, so I think now is a great time for a review. I have quite a bit to say about this game, so let's start with a history lesson. Early on in the lifespan of the SNES, the Sega Genesis, its main competition, threatened to take over the market due to its strong foothold in the US. Nintendo knew they must start development on a successor, or risk losing market dominance to Sega. Sometime in 1992 or 1993 Nintendo teamed up with Sony, an electronics manufacturer known for their tape recorders, TVs, and cameras. Sony wanted to create a CD-based addon for the SNES, which was called the "Playstation." Several working prototypes were made, but at the last second the deal fell through and Nintendo partnered with Phillips for their CDi console, which was a titanic failure. Sony continued development of the Playstation as a standalone console, which was eventually slated for a 1994 release in Japan, and 1995 in the US. After the premature ending of the Sony deal and the failure of the CDi, Nintendo teamed up with Silicon Graphics, a computer company known for their high-end workstations used in special effects and graphics processing. Nintendo was interested in their technologies ever since the develoment of Donkey Kong Country, the revolutionary 1994 SNES platformer by Rareware. With the use of the Deskside Onyx supercomputer, development of the successor of the SNES (codenamed "Project Reality") began. By 1994, it was revealed as the Nintendo Ultra 64. It was also revealed to stick to the cartridge format rather than discs (more on that later), and the first game planned for the system was a new 3D Mario game. Ever since the days of Argonaut Software's Starfox and the SuperFX chip's introduction, Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to make a 3D Mario title. It is rumored that such a game was planned, known simply as Super Mario FX, but no such rumor has been confirmed so it remains a mystery. In December of 1994, the Sony Playstation was released in Japan, and became a smash hit. A year later, it was released in the US, again becoming a huge success. Its overwhelming popularity led it to take over the market, becoming the bestselling console ever released, which would only be overtaken 5 years later with the PS2. This came as a threat to both Nintendo and Sega, who fought to maintain their huge market shares. Nintendo only started to work harder on the N64. The console's flagship game, the Mario game, would be the famous plumber's first ever 3D game and one of the most revolutionary of all time. It was called Super Mario 64, and was shown off at E3 1995 alongside the Ultra 64, soon to be renamed to simply the "Nintendo 64." The game impressed many people, and was predicted to be the N64's best game. Eventually, in 1996, the Nintendo 64 was released worldwide, and sales were quite high (although not as high as the Playstation). The console's signature launch title, Super Mario 64, got universal prasie from critics and gamers alike for its graphics, controls, and top-notch gameplay, and was considered a potential candidate for greatest game of all time. It became the best seller for the system, selling a total of 11,910,000 units. As for me, I first played Super Mario 64 DS, but soon got the N64 version on the Wii Virtual Console. Growing up, this was one of my favorite games, but nowadays, I don't remember how my time with the N64 version was on VC. Recently, having gotten into retro game collecting, I managed to pick up an N64 along with, of course, Super Mario 64. I then played it to full completion, and am now ready to offer my opinion on this game. Let's finally get into the actual review of this game, and see if it's as great as I remember it being. Story One sunny day, Mario is invited to the princess' castle to eat cake with the princess, now going by her original Japanese name Princess Peach. Upon arrival, he realizes the princess is gone, the castle's power stars were stolen, and everyone is trapped within strange paintings that lead to different worlds. Of course, Bowser is behind it all, so Mario sets out to recover the power stars and save the princess from Bowser. Gameplay You obviously play as Mario. This game is distinct for being a rare species of Mario game - it's a collectathon. A collectathon is defined as a 3D platformer in which the goal is to collect a certain amount of an item to progress within a handful of large open-world levels, rather than dozens of linear levels in which the goal is simply to make it to the end. A common criticism of this game is its controls, which many people claim have not aged well and make the game barely playable. Now, this may just be me, but I personally think the controls in Super Mario 64 are excellent and are on par with later 3D games. To me, the controls are perfectly functional and work well (for the most part, more on that later) with the game's level design. However, a there are a few exceptions. The camera controls haven't aged the greatest, since the camera can only be moved in set increments and can get stuck on literally everything. This makes it a constant annoyance throughout the whole game... that is, if you don't know about the other camera modes. Yes, most people don't know this, but there are more camera modes. The most useful is the Mario Cam mode. At first, it just follows Mario up close when you press R. What most people seem to forget is that you can press Down-C in this mode to zoom the camera out, making it function much more like the camera from Spyro the Dragon. Honestly I can't help but think that the awfulness of the camera control in this game has been somewhat exaggerated. Much worse are the controls for the Bowser fights. These controls are the ones I can say are truly bad. They're inaccurate, and it never feels like you can throw Bowser where you want to. However, since the Bowser fights don't happen too often, these don't ruin the game either. If I had to reccommend something, it's that this game is 10x better on a CRT TV, since there is a noticable half-second delay on a flatscreen (well, for me at least). Another quick thing to mention is the performance. The game usually runs anywhere from 20-30 FPS. Sometimes, the game lags a lot, but that only happens when it gets very busy onscreen. The framerate doesn't ruin the game, but it's far from unnoticable. This game could stand to run at a cool 30 consistently. Finally, the levels. There are 15 main levels - Bob-Omb Battlefield, Whomp's Fortress, Jolly Roger Bay, Cool Cool Mountain, Big Boo's Haunt, Hazy Maze Cave, Lethal Lava Land, Shifting Sand Land, Dire Dire Docks, Snowman's Land, Wet-Dry World, Tall Tall Mountain, Tiny Huge Island, Tick Tock Clock, and Rainbow Ride. The majority of these levels are well-designed and fun to play due to the level designers designing them around the controls rather than against them. This majority are open-ended levels with tons of things to do in them. There are only two levels I would say aren't all that great, and two which are just alright. Tall Tall Mountain is an ok level, but it doesn't work as well as something like Big Boo's Haunt or Whomp's Fortress due to its relatively linear level design. Dire Dire Docks is similar in that regard - there's a linear section you have to go through many times to get all the stars, which can get repetitive. Another flaw for that level is its low coin count (only 106 total on the level), which makes it overly frustrating to get the 100-coin star. Still, at worst, Dire Dire Docks is just annoying. The two levels that I don't care for all that much are Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride. All-in-all, they're not really that fun since they're both linear and repetitive. Rainbow Ride is especially boring since you're just waiting around on a slow-moving carpet most of the time. They're not all that poorly-made and they are playable, just not all that fun. One last issue to address is the stars. They are, for the most part, well designed and fun to go after and collect. However, the stars on the hint list don't list them in terms of difficulty, so you may end up starting a level with the hardest star in the stage, with the easiest coming right after. In addition, the game kicks you out of a level after every star. which is strange considering the game's open-ended nature. Banjo-Kazooie and Spyro the Dragon showed us how collectathons' main collectibles should work, keeping you in the level after you collect one. I should stress that this is, once again, far from game-ruining, but is rather a minor annoyance. Just like the camera control, the awfulness of the fact that you get kicked out of a level after every star has been exaggerated to some extent. It's not like collecting the stars besides a few of the 100 coin stars really takes that long anyway, so I don't fully understand why this is considered such a major shortcoming, of course other than the fact it can make a few levels (most notably Tall Tall Mountain, Tick Tock Clock, and Rainbow Ride) kind of repetitive to fully complete. Difficulty I already mentioned that the stars aren't listed in order of difficulty, which is a very minor flaw. A much bigger flaw is the bosses, which aren't the greatest. Most of them are pretty easy, and some get repeated throughout the levels and their missions. Some are a little bit interesting, like the hands in Shifting Sand Land, but most are pretty uninteresting. The worst boss has to be Bowser, but I already covered that. Again, it's mostly because of the unresponsive controls for swinging him around and the faulty camera present in those fights. It's for this reason that I don't usually fight the final boss whenever I play this game on the original N64, as it makes that boss ridiculously hard. However, despite these flaws, I think the difficulty in Super Mario 64 is well-balanced, and getting all 120 stars is a fun challenge. The presence of a save feature makes it very accessible, and since the game is very generous with extra lives, it's one of the best-designed colelctathon platformers I've played. I would reccommend getting all 120, especially if you're a Nintendo fan, a completionist, or are looking for something to keep you occupied for a while. If you don't want to do that, doing an Any% playthrough where you collect at least 70 stars is still a good time. Soundtrack One of my favorite things is the game's soundtrack. The songs are classic and sound great, given the musical capabilities of the N64 and how surprisingly well it stands up to the CD-quality audio of the console's competition. In fact, the music samples sound almost CD-quality in SM64, which is impressive considering this game was a launch title. However, despite the greatness of the soundtrack, it can get a bit repetitive due to repeating level themes (there's two snow levels and two water levels) and several levels reusing tracks (for example, Lethal Lava Land and Shifting Sand Land have the same song). It can be a little bit annoying, but I don't consider it a serious flaw. Graphics One of the last and quickest categories is the graphics. Overall, I think they're decent, even though they show their age at times. This is really only evident with a few models (ex. Bowser) and the many 2D sprite objects used to give an illusion of 3D. All things considered, though, the game is visually appealing nonetheless. Conclusion Overall, I think Super Mario 64 is a great, fun experience even to this day. In fact, it's even better than I remember it being. Despite some of its flaws and occasionally dated design choices, the game is an absolute blast to play and is great for those who love 3D platformers, Mario, or collectathons in general. It's not the greatest game ever made, but it's certainly one of my absolute favorites. I would absolutely recommend you play this game if you haven't already. If you're going to do so, you have a few options - you can play it on the N64 (which is how I played it) if you grew up with it or are looking in to adding an N64 to your collection, on the Wii U Virtual Console, which may be the most viable option (due to the convenience compared to the cartridge-based N64 and the upgraded performance and resolution, although there are reports of input lag, even on a CRT). You can also play the DS remake I mentioned earlier if you prefer handhelds to home consoles, as it's a decent port. However you play it, try this game out, you won't regret it. Thanks for reading this, my Shreks, and have a good day. 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